Conflict And The Hybrid Worker

Welcome to the hybrid workplace

Over the last two years, we’ve seen a few changes in the way we work, not least the move to remote and hybrid working. Based on data from full-time employees who have completed one of the personality assessments published by my company, then in February and March 2020, only around 6% spent all or almost all their time working remotely, but a year later, the figure was almost 40%. Now the percentage is falling again, reflecting a rise in hybrid working. Some people will spend almost all their working hours in an office or other communal workplace, some will work remotely all or almost all the time, but many more will divide their time between home and office. I’m now a hybrid worker myself.
 

In this new hybrid workplace, the rules of engagement aren’t always clear, and people’s behavior isn’t so easy to interpret. This is especially true when it comes to conflict. We all have our own way of dealing with conflict and often tend to assume that other people approach conflict in the same way as we do. This can lead to misunderstandings and fractured working relationships, but when we are meeting face to face, at least there are cues in other people’s speech, behavior, and facial expressions that can alert us to problems. But working remotely, this becomes a great deal more difficult. In a small video window on my laptop screen, can I really tell if someone is happy, sad, angry, engaged, or bored? And this becomes more complex again in a hybrid meeting where some people are physically present in the room with me and others are remote.

Understanding Conflict Styles

What can help is a framework for understanding your own conflict style, and how this differs from that of other people. The Thomas-Kilman conflict modes Instrument (TKI) provides a useful structure here. It looks at how assertive a person is (how focused they are on satisfying their own concerns) and how cooperative they are (how focused they are on satisfying other people’s concerns). The combination of these two factors means that an individual will tend naturally to fall into one of five modes when it comes to conflict: 

•  Avoiding (avoiding conflict, sidestepping the issue, withdrawing)
•  Accommodating (neglecting their own concerns to satisfy the concerns of other people)
•  Competing (pursuing their own goals at others’ expense)
•  Collaborating (working with others to find a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of both parties)
•  Compromising (splitting the difference, exchanging concessions, or seeking a quick middle-ground position).

Reading these descriptions, some may sound better to you or more adaptive than others are. But actually, all of them are equally good – when they are used in the right situation. And, especially in a hybrid working environment, all have their problems if they are over-used. This can be an issue as though we can use all five of these modes, at different times, we will naturally tend to mainly just use one or two. These may not always be the optimum way to approach conflict in the new hybrid workplace.

Avoiding

Although Avoiding may sound like a cop-out, it can be a very useful strategy. In our working lives, most of us have lots of things going on, often more than we can deal with right now; Avoiding can be a good way of parking issues until you have the time and headspace to deal with them. When an issue is trivial, or trivial for you, it makes sense to stay out of it. If you are a manager, sometimes it makes sense to let people solve problems for themselves. However, if you over-use avoiding, your views will not be heard and so this approach may not be ideal especially if you are taking part in a meeting remotely, but others are there in person. And as a manager of a remote or hybrid worker, you may miss the cues that they can’t solve that problem by themselves.

Accommodating

It may be hard to admit it, but we do sometimes need to defer to others and go with the flow. We might meet our long-term goals better if we park our immediate needs, perhaps especially if we are working in a more hierarchical environment. And sometimes, just sometimes, we might realize that we are wrong about something, and that we need to defer to the other person. Of course, if you over-use Accommodating, you are restricting how influential you are, your needs may not be met, and others may think that they can do whatever they want regardless of your views.

Compromising 

When something is quite important to you, but not really crucial, when you want to save your energy for other battles, then Compromising might be the mode to use. And when both you and the person you are in conflict with have really strong views, then you may need to compromise, especially when time is short or when, in a hybrid or remote working environment, communication is less straightforward. If, however, you over-use Compromising, you can lose sight of the big picture, and people may start to wonder what you really think and lose trust in you. This can be exacerbated if you are working remotely, and they cannot talk to you in person. If everything is negotiable, people become cynical.

Competing 

There are a number of places where Competing can be the right approach, such as when a quick decision is needed and there really isn’t time to consult and debate. Or when you need to take a difficult decision, that you know is the right thing to do, but you also know is going to be unpopular. Or maybe you need to make a stand on something that’s really important to you. And there might be times when you are working with very competitive people, and you need to take this approach yourself or be walked over. But if you over-use Competing, you’ll end up surrounded by yes men and women. People will be afraid to contradict you, and you won’t learn from your mistakes. And it is a lot easier to assume that people do agree with you when you aren’t talking face to face.

Collaborating

Collaborating is useful when you have the time to develop a win-win solution; integrating the viewpoints of different people in a collaborative way can lead to really innovative solutions being developed. It is also a great way to get buy-in and build rapport and so can be very useful with a hybrid or remote workforce. However, if you over-use Collaborating, you might find that you are spending too much time on relatively trivial discussions and becoming overloaded. It may also not be clear who is responsible for what – and with a mixed remote, in-person and hybrid workforce, it’s all too easy for responsibility to fall through the cracks.

Conflict Styles of Remote, In-Person and Hybrid Workers

In the last ten years, over 300,000 people have taken the TKI assessment online, and also told us about their remote working status. Since March-April 2020, there has been very little difference in typical conflict style between these three groups. People’s remote working status became less of a personal choice, and more something dictated by company policy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Before March 2020, however, there were some clear and statistically significant differences in four of the five conflict styles. The data suggest that on average, hybrid workers were more likely to have a competing style, and less likely to have an avoiding or accommodating style, than remote or non-remote workers. This may reflect the difficulties some hybrid workers may have in being heard. Remote workers were the most likely to use the collaborating style.
As remote or hybrid working once more becomes more of an issue of personal choice, these patterns are likely to reassert themselves. Knowing the typical conflict style of remote or hybrid workers will be very useful for managers and leaders in the future workplace.

John Hackston is a chartered psychologist and Head of Thought Leadership at The Myers-Briggs Company where he leads the company’s Oxford-based research team. He is a frequent commentator on the effects of personality type on work and life, and has authored numerous studies, published papers in peer-reviewed journals, presented at conferences for organizations such as The British Association for Psychological Type, and has written on various type-related subjects in top outlets such as Harvard Business Review.  Connect John Hackston